Because of the exhaustion of typical sources of energy and the increase in global energy demand, the development of alternative energy is currently receiving attention. In particular, biomass is a renewable quantitative biological resource which is greatly gaining attention as shown in ‘Production of Fuel from Biomass’ which is the alternative energy development project conducted by the Department of Energy, USA. 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is a biomass-derived material, which may be used instead of petrochemical based compounds whose production and use have been already established, and thorough research thereto is ongoing to date.
2,5-dihydroxymethylfuran which is a kind of furfuranol-based compound and 5-hydroxymethylfuranoic acid (HMFA) which is a kind of 2-furancarboxylic acid-based compound may be obtained via simple conversion of functional groups of 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) which is a kind of furfural-based compound, and are receiving attention as monomers necessary for synthesizing next-generation high performance and eco-friendly materials as replacements of conventional polymer products.
Currently, synthesis methods related to DHMF and HMFA include reactions using hydrogen or oxygen in the presence of a catalyst with the use of typical organic or inorganic oxidant/reductant, but such methods are difficult to commercialize because of a variety of constraints including vigorous reaction conditions such as high temperature and high pressure upon oxidation/reduction. Furthermore, these are problematic because the oxidants/reductants and catalysts used in conventional processes are expensive, and eco-unfriendly products may result due to the use of heavy metals, and also DHMF and HMFA have to be produced using respective independent processes.
Thus, if methods of efficiently preparing the above two materials are developed and mass production processes thereof are also provided, sufficiently inexpensive reactants may be ensured, thereby increasing their demand as industrial products.